berries red as any rose
by lenina20
Summary: On the first winter solstice after the war, Peeta asks Katniss out on a date. Post-Mockingjay. Pre-Epilogue.


**note: written for Prompts in Panem, prompt: _everlark during the holiday season_.**

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.-.

I'm not afraid to go outside.

I'm no good around a crowd, never have been. But I'm not afraid.

The _crowd_—

It's only a manner of speaking, of course. It hasn't been a year yet, and there's no crowd to speak of in District Twelve. A few hundreds, a couple of thousands, I don't know. I haven't been counting. Most of the survivors whose families were not directly involved in the war. Outnumbered, unsurprisingly, by the families of immigrants. Thirteen and Eleven, mostly. Some people also from industrial districts, Peeta tells me. Now that the construction work for the new factory is almost finished. Medicines, we're making. Manufactured natural remedies, collected from my woods. We will be all healers in Twelve, one day soon. It will be our wilderness keeping the rest alive.

Maybe we won't disappear, after all.

"Katniss?"

Except most of our new people. The ones who have come from Thirteen, looking up for the sunlight. I know they are not here to stay. They will all die out eventually. They will just disappear and leave no trace behind.

Only so few of them can have children.

Peeta is more of an optimist.

He has the chance to see the new people interacting with each other in town a lot more often than I do. Daily. He says inter-district marriage may even out the odds.

Secretly, I think that's taking one barren marriage, and making it two.

I know how multiplying works. Sort of like an infection.

"Katniss?"

Slowly, with difficulty, I force myself to focus on the present moment. The familiar smell of the rabbit stew. I raise my eyes. The peaceful, pale shade of blue in Peeta's inquisitive gaze. I'm right here. Right now. With him. He just asked me a question, and it got me thinking.

It's hard to keep the dark thoughts away, once they're here with me.

_Will you come? With me?_

I think of the new people of District Twelve who will be there. I think of the people of Thirteen. One barren marriage becomes two. Like an infection.

It means extinction, eventually. It means no more children.

No more tributes. No more games—

(—_but there_ _are no more games_, I tell myself. Again and again and again.)

Not that long ago, even though it feels like a lifetime sometimes, I know I could have thought of nothing better. No more children. No more tributes to pay.

Slowly, gradually disappearing. All of us. Completely.

Now—

I'm not so sure.

I see a lot of lost children when I close my eyes. I see a lot of dead children.

It's not the morbid thought of replacing, but—

There are no more games.

And there are so very few people left in my world—

I choose to focus on Peeta. "Yes?" I ask him, because he has been calling my name. Forcefully, I draw myself away from the scary mess of my thoughts and glue my eyes to his.

I'm not afraid of them. The people outside. The new people of District Twelve.

I'm not afraid of going out.

Still my hands shake as I force myself not to avert my eyes when Peeta smiles, resuming the conversation in the exact same place he left it when I slipped away. As usually, there's no urgency in Peeta's voice, no demands. He doesn't hide his eyes. Never does. Probably can't, doesn't know how to. But unexpectedly he looks shy, too. I can see it right through the cracks of his grin. "It's just something the folks from twelve want to do for the newcomers. Show 'em our traditions, you know. I thought maybe you'd want—"

His words trail off, vanish beneath the carefree roll of his shoulders. He doesn't need me to hear the rest. The rest doesn't matter, and we both know what he just thought that I might want, anyway. It's the first winter solstice after the war. It's supposed to mean something.

Fresh meat after the slaughter of the very little cattle families will not be able to feed during the famine months. Recently fermented beer and wine. The last frugal feast before the spring. Our community's celebration of the reversal of an ebbing sun that will soon be returned to us.

I know how it goes.

It depends entirely on us now. We are free. We can have fresh meat all year long; trains from the other districts arrive daily, and soon enough we'll have roads and there won't be a single wall blocking our away.

Except for me, _my way _of course, but—

Still. The winter solstice festival can mean whatever we make of it.

Peeta, it seems, even if he hasn't said the word, wants to make a _date_ of it.

We've never been out on a date. We've never—

We're eighteen. We've survived two Hunger Games and a civil war. We burned to scraps and were remade a dozen times. How can we—?

We've never done any of the things young couples are supposed to do. But we're still here. And I think that may be it, that Peeta's suggestion is perhaps strategic. A simple thing, really. _Want us to go together to the winter festival? Want to come? With me? _We go to town together often enough, but a _date_—

It may help us stand steadier on our feet.

Playing pretend is an old habit, so I can't help but wonder for a minute.

Is this how it would have been, without the games and the rebellion and the war? One simple day, Peeta might have finally gathered the courage to ask me out on a date.

I would have rejected him without thinking. Snapped at him. Shut him off with such coldness that he would have never thought of doing it again. I would have broken his heart, without even knowing what I was doing.

I wouldn't have realized. What I was despising. What I was so sure I didn't want.

Again.

The thought scares me into a trembling fit in spite of the good, irreplaceable things that alternative world has that this world will never have again. Misplaced guilt ties a knot in my stomach so tight that I flinch, my throat clotting around a spoonful of mashed peas. Peeta frowns, but quickly I intercept his worry with my own. "No one's coming, right?"

I don't need to elaborate. He knows what I mean. It's a party, and it's _our_district. We are the star-crossed lover of District Twelve that sparked the revolution with their refusal to live without the other. We are the matter of History, but the new government is rather adamant on pretending I don't exist. They are who they are and they do what they do because of what I did to earn my confinement.

Because of one of the people I killed. The last one.

It's convenient that they're much better than we ever were at playing pretend. They're letting us be, and that is all I want right now.

Peeta—

"You know I wouldn't do that." His voice drops and I flinch again, instinctively moving away from his sigh. His eyes slide off mine this time, but he isn't hiding his heart. He's only shaking off the remnants of an anger that's only partly his own.

"I know, I know." I react fast this time. I reach over the kitchen table and hold his hand in mind, squeezing gently, pulling him back. "I'm sorry."

In a breath his eyes are blue again, familiar as the winter sky when he lifts his head to nod reassuringly. 'It's okay."

"No, I—" I know I need to stop asking certain questions, regardless of how desperately I need to be sure. I _am _sure that Peeta wouldn't ask me out to a place where the cameras would be watching. It would drive him mad a lot faster that it would break me. Doubting even for a second that it's real. "I'd like to go. To the festival," I stutter a bit, dropping my eyes for a second as the corners of my lips twist into a bashful, genuine smile. "With you."

His whole face splits up into a wide, happy grin, and just by looking at him I manage to hold onto my small smile for a few seconds. It's no big deal, I tell myself. I'm not afraid of people. I'm not afraid of the crowd. I want to go out on a date with Peeta, and just listening to that word inside my head—_date date date date_—I can feel a powerful, resilient surge of giddiness seeping through the dark clouds looming over my heart. There is an ocean of frantic memories to find my way through, but it still takes me no time to find the days when I thought something like this this would never happen. The days when I was sure that he didn't love me anymore and would never love me again. That I would never get to touch him and feel him, or even _see_ him again.

A date might help us get unstuck, I think.

It may help us figure some things out.

It's silly, really, to be nervous about a stroll in town and a glass of eggnog, maybe finding one of Cinna's long wool sweaters to wear, so for once I don't look like a rag. It's a party and ours is a brand new world regardless of my feelings on the matter, so really. It's no big deal. In a matter of just minutes the dishes will be done, the kitchen cleaned up for the night, and I will be half sitting and half lying on the couch in front of the fire, a book borrowed from Haymicth on my lap and my freezing feet tucked beneath Peeta's thighs. We might watch TV for a while, a silly mindless show that is entirely not real and doesn't pretend to be anything but.

And then we will go to bed.

As every night Peeta will tuck me in gently inside his arms. He'll bury his face in my hair and I will fall asleep lulled by the rhythm of his rocking chest, deliberately lost in the steady beating of his heart, the impossibly good sensation of his warm lips pressed to my neck in an unintended caress. So I don't think of what comes later, when I'm under and can't feel him anymore.

As every night I will fall asleep with my forehead creased and my eyes clutched tight, wishing for the first rays of sunlight to get here already. The first rays of sunlight that will stir him awake behind me. It will be over then.

One night less. One day more.

I might even smile as I follow him down the stairs, sit at the table to just watch him as he rolls up the dough, drinking up the scent of rising flour and peppermint leaves being infused in the teapot.

Each night we go to bed together.

After every nightmare his arms are there to comfort me. I wake to his arms stretching by my side, every morning. He yawns loudly as I rub sleep and sweat off my eyes.

We are living together, every step of the way.

What's a date out in town compared to the things we cannot go by without?

I decide on a loose-fit, scoop-neck, open-knit long sweater in a deep shade of gray that reminds me of Cinna's dark eyes. It's as soft and warm, and it makes me feel as comfortable as Cinna's kind words and gentle hands always did, when I needed to feel brave the most. Buttercup watches me attentively as I smooth the soft fabric over my thighs, my eyes ignoring the mirror as I silently talk my hands into stopping their stupid shaking. It's only a couple of hours, I tell myself as I braid my hair. I can do this. I can be with Peeta and enjoy being with him and forget about the rest of it. Forget about every reason why it's wrong to celebrate that, one year more, the sun will return to us. The world will go on turning. New people will keep on coming to District Twelve and settling here, and each person will rebuild, make anew their little corner of the world.

Until the old one disappears and a new one stands in its place.

And only our book of memories remains.

The book and Peeta and myself. Stuck remembering.

"Katniss?"

I make my way down the stairs on trembling knees, but plaster a steady smile on my lips that rises unexpectedly when my eyes settle on Peeta. He's holding the front door open with his shoulder, leaning against the doorframe as he waits. He's just returned from town after spending the entire day baking black buns. I think it's rather stupid to walk all the way to town to deliver the buns and then come back here to pick me up, only so that we can walk all the way to town together. I offered meeting up with him there, or helping him deliver the black buns on our way to the square, but he patiently—and a bit amusedly—explained to me that that's really not how dates work.

"I offered to help out with the preparations, but I'll be back in hour," he said, smiling tenderly but being very insistent with his hands on my waist as he turned me in the direction of the stairs. "Relax, take a bath, whatever. I will pick you up at five."

"Peeta—"

I refused to take one single step upstairs until he was long out of the door, choosing instead to scowl at him with everything in me for as long as he could endure the unforgiving weight of my glare. Which is a lot, actually. He hadn't stopped smiling for a second, which only served to make me angrier. I was doing my best to remain unfazed and nonchalant about the whole date thing, and yet there he was, turning it into as big a deal as he possibly could without making it _too much_ of a big deal that I would recoil. If the cheerful smugness of his smile hadn't made me travel back in time to happier days, I might have called off the whole thing. But how could I when his eyes were shining so bright?

If anything, at exactly five o'clock, his gaze glows ever brighter. His cheeks are flushed from the cold, his blond hair slightly matted, wet and shining with melted snow. He's standing right there, looking handsome and happy, ready to pick me up and take me out on an actual date. The entire scene, the length and breadth of his smile—it all makes so little sense in my life, in the terrible and dark and lonely world I usually live in, that for a second I am transported out of it. I'm swept off my feet. I am just Katniss, about to go out on a first day with this nice, funny, handsome boy I really like in spite of myself. I'm nervous and giddy and a bit scared, but I know that whatever happens in the next hour or so, when the smoke of dust settles over the shortest day of the year—

—tomorrow the sun will shine a little brighter, a little longer.

I return Peeta's smile without any reservations. "Shall we?"

Outside, the late afternoon wind blows cold against my cheeks all the way into town. It flushes up my cheeks and catches in my braid and, by the time my gloved hands are tightly wrapped around a steaming paper cup, the scent of gingerbread and peppermint sending shivers down my spine, I can no longer feel my toes. It's a good non-feeling. The numbness helps me focus my attention away from the handful of stares I spy around the square. They're unavoidable, and there aren't too many, so I suck it up and drink my tea, willing the heat to spread quickly through my deadened limbs.

There aren't many familiar faces in the square, but only the few people that we usually talk to come greet us when we arrive. Strangers from Twelve barely look at us anymore. It's better than it used to be, after Thread and the other new peacekeepers and the strict rationings and the curfew and the constant threat of a shooting squad. I suppose some of them might feel the tiniest spark of pride at the thought that the rebellion was brewed here, that the heroes of the revolution were victors from District Twelve. But for most of them, freedom hardly balances out the losses.

They mostly just ignore us. Unless they're interested in trading game or buying baked goods.

But for the new citizens coming in from the other districts, we are still celebrities.

They've seen it all and know it all, they think; so it's hard for them not to look.

Thankfully, looking is all they do, and I only have to endure twenty minutes of awkward strolling around the improvised booths selling hot beverages and homemade food. We scurry between the merry gatherings of people, going through even more awkward greetings and bits and pieces of small talk about how the reconstruction is coming along in the new streets being built far where our vantage point in the new town square cannot reach. Peeta's big, warm smile is catching as ever and as in the days of long ago, it makes the ordeal a million times easier.

My smile is steady on my lips, still; my heart light in my chest when at last Peeta and I find a quiet bench to sit on and eat our black buns, not far behind the ensemble of kids and young people singing traditional winter songs on the stage that's been set up in front of our brand new Town Hall.

_Then here's to the maid in the lily white smock,_

_Who tripped to the door and slipped back the lock_.

Peeta begins to speak quietly after a while.

"You know, each year I used to hope you'd be there," he says, his voice soft, his eyes darting from the stage only for a second to look at me before he nods in the direction of the eclectic choir. "That you'd sing winter songs with the other kids from school, and I'd be so enthralled by your voice that my shyness would melt away, and I'd finally be brave enough to approach you. I'd say something nice about your voice, and… I don't know. I never planned it that far ahead," he chuckles, his neck twisting so that his eyes can catch mine before I take off running.

For a second, I allow it.

The indulgence. The fantasy. I let myself be transported to this new old world and imagine myself singing with some of my fellow classmates in the winter festival. It would have never happened, but Peeta had been hoping, so I indulge him. I picture the flush of my cold cheeks and the warmth of my blood rushing through my veins. The slight itch in the back of my throat after an hour of singing. His blue eyes shinning brighter than the snow, freezing and shy. I imagine him eloquent and charming the way he only knows how to be, and for an instant, I hold my breath and I smile—

But then all I can feel is the dread and the guilt I would have felt if Peeta had ever come telling me how pretty my voice was or how nice those songs I had sung were. I think of the boy with the bread, and the years I let pass me by without even saying _thank you_. I remember the cave, and how guilty he felt for just throwing the bread at me and not doing something _more_ to help me. Something more than saving my life and the life of my family. Something more than the dandelion in the spring.

_The Stag leaps through the wood with his proud crown of horn, _

_And it is through his sacrifice the Sun is reborn_.

"I stopped singing when my father died."

His face falls, but he nods quickly. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"It's okay," I cut him off. I paint a smile on my face and think, oddly, that maybe if I had known that Peeta had been hoping against all hope that I'd sing in the square with the other kids during the winter solstice, I might have done it after all. As a token of the gratitude I could never show him otherwise.

"No, it's—" He struggles to explain himself, but I know before he does that there is no way around what he intends to say. So I just wait, until he finds his breath again. "I remember that. I remember hoping and daydreaming and I remember you singing the first day of school, too. The red plaid dress. Your hair in two braids. The Valley Song. They had no footage of the things I only knew in my head, they couldn't change those. Only bury them as deep as they could, but I've found them now.

"Peeta—"

"I've found them," he repeats, his blue eyes deep inside my own.

I have to look away.

I have to concentrate on the song for a bit, focus on the haunting lyrics and ignore how it slips out of tune every few seconds, discordant voices struggling to fall in synchrony. It's hard to chase away the self-loathing gnawing at my entrails when the thought assaults me. _I could sing now_. It'd be easy. People are joining the group and stepping out all the time. I could stand up and walk my way up the little stage and start singing with the others.

But I don't want to.

So I don't move, and I immediately feel guilty.

All I can think is, _at least he asked me out this time and I said yes_.

And here we are. At last.

I don't know what to say, but after all this time it's easy enough to just _do_something. Reach out and grab his gloved hand in mind. He thanks me immediately with a gentle smile, his blue eyes bright and unclouded, but clearly lost in a memory that tugs at the corner of his lips. "In Thirteen, I listened to you singing all day long. _The Hanging Tree_, the one you sang for Pollux. I didn't understand why I couldn't stop listening to it, but I just… I couldn't."

He told me once that he fell in love with me when he was five years old, after he heard me singing for the first time. It's a tempting thought—the somehow deluded notion that that is the reason why he made the doctors in District Thirteen play that sound clip of me singing to Pollux over and over again. It's tempting—to imagine that he was only trying to recreate that first day of school. To make it happen again. Trying to fall in love with me the same way he'd fallen the first time. There in Thirteen, when he hated me. No longer because he thought I was a mutt. He didn't believe that anymore. He hated me because he knew how bad I had hurt him.

But still he listened to me singing—

He seems to be reading my mind, I notice, as his smile grows bigger and I feel its warmth spreading though my chest. My breath catches in my throat when he speaks, his eyes now right here, right now, with me. "I forgot that I loved you, but I never really stopped."

_Loving me_.

He's so good with words that he knows exactly how many he needs to use to steal away the air of my lungs without setting me off and running. He doesn't even say _I love you_, only _I never really stopped_, and it means so much more. It means _everything_. It means they never took it away. Peeta's love.

They could never do that.

I try to say something, even if only just his name, but before I can begin to disentangle the knot at the back of my tongue, he's leaning closer, his smile relentless. "So thank you, really, for agreeing to come here today. With me. I mean, it's—I don't know." His eyes dart to the center of the square for just a second as he struggles to find the right words. His speechlessness only unhinges me for a beat. Then, in a blink, his eyes are back on mine, a look of concentration wrinkling the scars bellow his hairline.

"It feels real," he finally whispers.

He ties it all up inside his muddled head. Before and after. How he loved me then and how he loves now. And it connects, this time. It makes sense. He asked me out to the winter festival and I said yes. He remembers now. It feels real.

"It _is_ real," I say, for my sake more than his.

As I connect the dots of his jumbled thoughts inside the mess of my own head, I can't help myself. I can do nothing to repress the urge close the small distance between us, a quick, uninvited smile curving up my lips. My mouth brushes his timidly and I hold my breath in my chest for an instant. Then, I force myself to press my lips against his a little harder, a bit longer.

When I pull away, I don't even register my eyes scanning my surroundings until I've done it. I look around at the small stage, at the singers standing in front of the Town Hall. At the booths scattered all around the town square. Groups of people, familiar and unfamiliar faces chatting animatedly, all of them looking carefree and content. I realize with a short, involuntary sigh of relief.

Nobody's watching us.

Peeta notices my wandering eyes as soon as I pull away, of course. But as he follows my gaze around the square, his grin grows unexpectedly playful. "I guess it's a good thing they all think we're crazy now, isn't it?"

Before I know it, I'm returning his low, fragile chuckle with one of my own. "We_are_ crazy now."

Peeta's grin twitches, amused, and I feel the tip of his gloved thumb sliding up my wrist and crawling beneath the hem of my leather glove. His woolen glove is thick and warm. There's no cold, startling contact between my heated skin and the rough wool covering his fingers. And yet I shiver anyway.

"Well, well, well. Don't you took look cozy?"

Violently, caught up in the moment, I snap my head around to look for his wavering figure as soon as I hear the familiar voice. But before I see him moving, Haymitch is already sitting on the bench with us, on my left, pushing me closer to Peeta with a shove of his elbow as he digs out his flask from the pocket of his winter coat.

I can't suppress the scowl pulling at my forehead as I look at him. He doesn't need any kind of verbal reproach to grasp my meaning, so he returns my glare unfazed, his eyebrows shooting up in a ridiculous expression of mock innocence. "What?" he asks, pouring a shot of white liquor in the eggnog cup he's holding. "It's a party, sweetheart. I came for the celebrations. Eat the buns, listen to the songs…"

Unsurprisingly, Peeta laughs, obviously taking Haymitch's pathetic excuses for a lame, yet funny joke. I'm not that benevolent, though. He came at us from behind, unannounced. A drunk, snarky comment mocking what I thought was a private, intimate moment.

There was nobody watching, I thought.

He caves in beneath the strength of my scowl a lot faster than Peeta does.

"Okay. Okay." He shakes his head, visually recoiling. His eyes slide off mine, rising over my shoulder to look at Peeta, and an apologetic grimace twists up his lips. His gaze returns to me, calmer and stronger. "Boy here couldn't contain his excitement about your _date_—" He wiggles his eyebrows, for very much unneeded emphasis, "—so he spilled the beans. I just came to make sure you weren't moping your way through this very special occasion." He actually _winks_. "Show the boy a good time for a change, will you?"

I have a sudden urge. Two sudden urges. They collide beneath my fizzing nerves and I am paralyzed. I want to punch Haymitch in the face. I want to cross my arms protectively over my chest, drawn like a shield.

I do nothing.

I don't move.

I barely manage to squeeze Peeta's hand in mine to try and get a hold on my emotions.

It's infuriating, to be perfectly honest, that Haymitch feels the need to insult me every time he's trying to cover for himself.

I'm not stupid. I know that he's not here to make sure that I show Peeta a good time. He's not here to tease us, or to get on my nerves and under my skin.

He's here to check on us. He's here to make sure that we are both in one piece, still, and neither of us has broken down completely yet.

I'd be touched by his concern. Maybe. If he weren't so happy to mask it under a coat of contempt aimed entirely towards me.

Can't he give a hard time to Peeta, for a change?

My tone is hard and unforgiving. My words sharp and brisk, a reluctant answer to the question he will not ask. "We're _fine_."

We're also on a _date_, I want to say, but can't bring myself to. So _scram, buddie_.

My anger, or how guarded I can be—these things Haymitch doesn't hold it against me. He never does, unless he's teasing me about it. So he only nods carefully after I make myself clear, his eyes traveling from me to Peeta and back again to me. His face softens strangely, then, and he almost smiles as he stands up from the bench. He takes a long gulp from his spiked eggnog and smirks at us as he begins to walk away.

"Yes, sweetheart," he says. "You are just fine."

We are.

That's why I roll my eyes at Peeta when I turn around on the bench to look back at him. "_Now_ he takes the role of chaperone?"

With a contrite smile, Peeta apologizes. "Sorry about that," he bites his lip. "I really didn't mean to tell him, but he—"

"It's okay," I assure him quickly, scooting closer to rest my head on his shoulder. For a few seconds, he doesn't move at all. I know that he's expecting me to move away any second, and I will. Soon. Not yet.

When he surrenders, drawing his arm around my back to pull me closer, I bit back a small smile. My eyes float over the snow-covered pavement to settle on the singing ensemble once again. They haven't gotten any better since the last time I paid them any mind, but the melodies and lyrics are just as pretty, as they invoke the coming spring and celebrate the ebbing of the longest night, the inexorable return of the sun.

_Holly hath berries red as any rose._

_The forester, the hunter, keep them from the does._

It's okay, I assure myself, in silence, breathing slowly. I press my temple a bit closer to Peeta's shoulder.

_We're fine_.

.-.

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**the lyrics included throughout the story all come from Piereligion.**


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